In my dissertation I examine how adaptations of Greek tragedy in South Africa after the fall of apartheid (1994) address the transitional stage of the country and mediate in the formation and apprehension of post-apartheid national identities and the formation of a new communitas. Drawing particularly from Raymond Williams and Jean-Pierre Vernant, I approach tragedy as a paradigmatic model for analyzing the dialectical relationship between cultural text and social context. The examination of this paradigm in the context of post-apartheid South Africa is grounded in postcolonial theory defined as an ongoing project of addressing the politics of identity representation in conjunction with the underlying conditions of cultural and material inequalities in a neo-colonial context. I am focusing on three plays that provide distinct perspectives on the problem of national identity in the post-apartheid era and distinct artistic approaches to the process of adaptation. My examination of each play consists of two, interrelated parts: in the first part, I conduct a structural analysis of the text and an examination of the ways it relates to and reworks the major themes and concepts of the Greek tragedy it adapts. In the second part, I examine the connections between the country’s dominant discourses on national identities and the plays’ representations of these.

This dissertation critiques four stagings of The Merchant of Venice observed in three theatrical cultures of the Anglophone world and argues that engaging productions of this script take into account its self-deconstructive character as one of its most decisive ordering principles. The dissertation draws on Derrida's Deconstruction, stressing that, according to the acknowledged father of the movement, texts do have transcendental traces. It discusses themes such as anti-Semitism versus ethnic intolerance,homosexuality verus somody, carnivalization, and the representation of emotions.

“Violence and Performance on the Latin American Stage” investigates Latin American theatre of the 1960s. It focuses on violence as an inherently formal element that intersects multiple contexts. My purpose is to develop a reading that challenges traditional interpretations of Latin American avant-garde theatre. I argue that this theatre does not apply European forms to Latin American realities, but rather juxtaposes local with foreign elements in multiple domains. It connects aesthetic, philosophic, social, and political contexts through the use of violent theatrical forms. The playwrights José Triana, Virgilio Piñera, Griselda Gambaro, and Jorge Díaz develop an aesthetics of violence that examines the ontological effects of crisis and revolution. Their characters confront questions of agency, subjectivity, historical perception, and consciousness that speak to their audiences’ experience in the sixties –I focus specifically on the Cuban revolution, Argentina’s growing socio-political violence, and Chile’s changing social demographics. I aim to show that the plays demand a simultaneous textual and contextual reading that dialogues with the multiple contexts and domains the plays intersect. My analysis focuses on the concepts of violence and performance in order to emphasize the plays’ modernizing role within their national theatrical scenes. I examine the challenges of theatrical writing and practice in times of conflict and social transformation, commenting on the disparaged reception of the plays’ innovative forms. I contend that this problem of reception accounts for the plays’ highly sophisticated structures of violence, which, in most cases, confused and distanced their audiences. This dissertation ultimately seeks to reveal the power of this theatre’s violent aesthetics to synthesize and critically engage with its cultural and socio- political surroundings.

In my dissertation I examine how adaptations of Greek tragedy in South Africa after the fall of apartheid (1994) address the transitional stage of the country and mediate in the formation and apprehension of post-apartheid national identities and the formation of a new communitas. Drawing particularly from Raymond Williams and Jean-Pierre Vernant, I approach tragedy as a paradigmatic model for analyzing the dialectical relationship between cultural text and social context. The examination of this paradigm in the context of post-apartheid South Africa is grounded in postcolonial theory defined as an ongoing project of addressing the politics of identity representation in conjunction with the underlying conditions of cultural and material inequalities in a neo-colonial context. I am focusing on three plays that provide distinct perspectives on the problem of national identity in the post-apartheid era and distinct artistic approaches to the process of adaptation. My examination of each play consists of two, interrelated parts: in the first part, I conduct a structural analysis of the text and an examination of the ways it relates to and reworks the major themes and concepts of the Greek tragedy it adapts. In the second part, I examine the connections between the country’s dominant discourses on national identities and the plays’ representations of these.

This dissertation critiques four stagings of The Merchant of Venice observed in three theatrical cultures of the Anglophone world and argues that engaging productions of this script take into account its self-deconstructive character as one of its most decisive ordering principles. The dissertation draws on Derrida's Deconstruction, stressing that, according to the acknowledged father of the movement, texts do have transcendental traces. It discusses themes such as anti-Semitism versus ethnic intolerance,homosexuality verus somody, carnivalization, and the representation of emotions.

It has long been known that sight was a crucial component of the fifth-century Athenian theatre. And while that is true, it can also be argued that aurality, the ability to hear and be heard, is an equally important aspect of Athenian drama. This dissertation strives to reclaim a place for hearing in studies on tragedy generally and on Sophokles in particular. Adopting terms from radio theory and media theory, I suggest that Athens was both an acoustic space and an aural community. In the course of an examination of four tragedies, I engage with the following question: how do the characters in these plays hear? Analyzing each play in turn, I show how hearing can occur physically, socially, publically and politically respectively. For Elektra, hearing is a physical and psychic blow; for Philoktetes, hearing is how he connects with the world around him and how he tries to reconnect with people; for Deianeira, hearing is a dangerous phenomenon capable over overturing her own predictions and capable of causing her to lose control of the final shape of her aural reputation; for Oidipous, hearing is an expression of his political status and ultimately a cause of his fall from power. The results of this study show that, in each case, the act of hearing is an invasive process in which the sonant object, mobile and semi-autonomous, can intrude upon new spaces, stage and body alike. This dissertation contributes to a growing body of literature on aurality in tragedy and enhances our understanding of the interconnections between hearing, society, politics, and the individual.

During his fifty-year career, the Italian director Giorgio Strehler (1921-1997) staged more plays by Shakespeare than by any other playwright, but only a few of his most recent and successful Shakespearean productions have received international critical attention, and The Tempest he directed in 1978 is among them. Thirty years before however, in 1948, he directed a first, completely different production of the same text. Starting from the theoretical assumption that a theatre performance, as object, exists only in the moment in which it is actually produced, that is, in its reception by the audience, this dissertation has a twofold purpose: to explore the different contexts in which the two productions directed by Strehler were staged, and to underline how, from the beginning of his career he developed a crucial attention for interpretative techniques culminating in the 1978 Tempest. Aside from being based on the same text and from being produced by the same ensemble, the Piccolo Teatro of Milan, though with two radically different acting and technical troupes, the two productions of The Tempest directed by Strehler enlighten the variety of dynamics – from historical, political, and cultural, to more specifically theatrical, technical, and dramaturgical – which interacted within him while he was working at the staging of the play, and emphasizes the centrality of the director in contemporary theatre. Finally, this dissertation examines how the pragmatic process of rehearsal might modify the director's theoretical approach to a text, and shows how the study of a performance consists not just in the quest for its meaning, but in the investigation of how the text is brought to the stage, to that coalescent point that, in order to materialize, demands active participation and involvement from both interpreters and spectators.

“Violence and Performance on the Latin American Stage” investigates Latin American theatre of the 1960s. It focuses on violence as an inherently formal element that intersects multiple contexts. My purpose is to develop a reading that challenges traditional interpretations of Latin American avant-garde theatre. I argue that this theatre does not apply European forms to Latin American realities, but rather juxtaposes local with foreign elements in multiple domains. It connects aesthetic, philosophic, social, and political contexts through the use of violent theatrical forms. The playwrights José Triana, Virgilio Piñera, Griselda Gambaro, and Jorge Díaz develop an aesthetics of violence that examines the ontological effects of crisis and revolution. Their characters confront questions of agency, subjectivity, historical perception, and consciousness that speak to their audiences’ experience in the sixties –I focus specifically on the Cuban revolution, Argentina’s growing socio-political violence, and Chile’s changing social demographics. I aim to show that the plays demand a simultaneous textual and contextual reading that dialogues with the multiple contexts and domains the plays intersect. My analysis focuses on the concepts of violence and performance in order to emphasize the plays’ modernizing role within their national theatrical scenes. I examine the challenges of theatrical writing and practice in times of conflict and social transformation, commenting on the disparaged reception of the plays’ innovative forms. I contend that this problem of reception accounts for the plays’ highly sophisticated structures of violence, which, in most cases, confused and distanced their audiences. This dissertation ultimately seeks to reveal the power of this theatre’s violent aesthetics to synthesize and critically engage with its cultural and socio- political surroundings.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Benjamin Torrico / This thesis analyses the play Nosferatu by the contemporary Spanish author Francisco Nieva, and more specifically focuses on its genesis in silent film, primarily German Expressionist. First we take a look at the genre and style of the work itself, followed by a history of the vampire in literature and film. After a brief summary of the play, we begin to focus on the films, first discussing how Nieva came into contact with them in France through the cinémathèques. What follows is a detailed study of the films, with summaries, analysis of themes, and finally a comparison to Nosferatu, looking at the elements of the play that each film directly influenced.

Over the past decade, there has been a turn in applied health research towards the use of performance as a tool for knowledge translation. The turn to performance in applied health sciences has emerged as researchers have struggled to find new and engaging ways to communicate complex research findings regarding the human condition. However, the turn to performance has occurred within the political landscape of the knowledge economy, and thus conforms to contemporary practices of knowledge production and evaluation. Recent studies about health-based performances exhibit two hallmarks of economized modes of knowledge production. First, these studies focus their attention on the transmission of knowledge to health care professionals through an exposure to performance. Knowledgeable, and thus more useful or efficient, health care providers are the end-product of this transaction. Second, many of these productions are created in the context of application, and thus are driven by an accountability and goals-oriented approach to knowledge acquisition. This thesis argues that economized and rationalized modes of knowledge production do great harm to performance’s pedagogical and ethical potential. By utilizing scientific evaluative methodologies to monitor performance’s ‘success’ as an evaluable, predictable and ends-oriented practice obscures performance’s libratory value, and thus misses performance’s potentially most potent and critical contributions. To mount this argument, I present a case study of Margaret Edson’s play Wit, which has been used widely in medical education. Drawing from the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, I critically explore the impact of the knowledge economy on arts-based pedagogical models within health research and education. Further, I seek to redress potential harms inflicted by the knowledge economy by developing the notion of ethical “response-ability.” Through this concept I argue that performance challenges normative conceptions of reason, rationality and scientific evaluation, making the use of theatre in contemporary educational settings at once troublesome and vital.